The Center for the Study of Local Knowledge is committed to building an inclusive research community. CSLK’s Local Knowledge Seminar is an interdisciplinary forum comprised of University of Virginia faculty and graduate students. This seminar provides a venue for participants to share critical perspectives, ideas, and research projects that explore the many dimensions and conceptions of local knowledge. The issues raised in the seminar cut across disciplinary boundaries and open up new terrain to address a number of issues, particularly constructions of gender, race, and nation.

The Local Knowledge Seminar also features a Research Workshop. The aim of the workshop is to challenge and transform relationships of knowledge and power. The Research Workshop is geared towards creating dynamic venues for social and intellectual exchange between academic and lay scholars. Scholars participating in the Research Workshop explore how research and teaching programs incorporating critical understandings of local knowledge can contribute to changing the cultures of scholarship within the academy, particularly within the fields of African-American and African Studies.